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Monday, January 30, 2012

Desperate, Yarvis released his cudgel again, drawing Connab closer with his right arm. He reached around his shorter opponent's back with his left hand, found the blood-soaked knife wounds by feel, and dug fingers in.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Most times, when I write something, I just do it and move on. I force myself to worry about syntax and error correction later. I do this because I know I have to get what I want out and on the page, get it down so I don't lose the thread I am trying to hold onto.

Sometimes you have to go back and tweak it, otherwise nothing makes sense...

Tonight, I had a good little paragraph. It was alright. It served its purpose.

I immediately went back and began playing with it. Some things are important. Critical, even. One such thing, for me, is the feelings I have had on looking at death.

This is the result:

Blonde hair of shoulder length and lively color made a queer halo about a face he didn’t know but would now always remember. He felt an odd satisfaction he didn’t recognize her. Some part of Yarvis was always glad he hadn't known the dead. In his experience, most who were murdered had earned it in some way.

Friday, January 20, 2012

I still rode in. I was, for the first time in recent memory, the only bike on the road. I have rain gear, I have good safety equipment, and I rode more cautiously than my usual.

Still, I arrived at work cold, wet and a little wrung out.

What I didn't bring to work was a great, big, ugly wad of angry.

That, my friends, is the single biggest difference for me between riding and driving. In a car, if someone cuts me off or endangers my life, I have to stew on it through traffic, quite possibly close to the driver and vehicle that endangered me. Stew and brood and howl, if angered enough.

There's no getting away from it.

While riding, I might howl, once, then I am past and watching out for the next mouth-breathing moron's attempt to kill us both. It is far better for mood and mind to be able to get it out and give it away, focus on the next thing.

I think that's one of the reasons riding is associated with 'cool'; one cannot hold onto shit that really only hurts the bearer. Instead you have to move to the next thing and do it as best you can. Well, you could, but then you are likely to get hit by the next bad thing while you're head down and polishing your hurt feelings.

I hope I can continue riding and keeping whatever measure I have of cool. Not anywhere near Steve McQueen's level of cool, mind you. But as close as a mere mortal can come:

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

So, those few of you that read me often have clearly been pining for more, as my email inbox is stuffed to overflowing with all the screaming and chest-beating missives begging me for another of those posts that require mind-bleach to remove from consciousness.

Fuck you. This ain't one of those posts.

No, instead I think I will explain why I haven't been producing much of anything creatively. Quite simply: I have been down. Busy with day-jobbery, and down. I have not been writing with anywhere near the speed or frequency I maintain in better times.

Work is going well, for the most part. There are still a great number of people I feel should know better that make the same poor decisions on a daily basis, but that's just my foolish desire people be better. We have had some major adjustments in the court process, many of them requiring a lot of thought and energy to implement and monitor. I am glad of them, but there it is.

As many of you might know, I finished the re-write last year in October, it has gone nowhere, and been seen by no one. There are reasons justifying this, but they don't help me, they only show me how far I am from where I want to be, and lead me to feel somewhat hopeless.

I recently learned that the short story anthology I had a strong chance of being a part of is no more. Not that the work wasn't good enough, but that the house will not be doing the project at all. Disappointing, and not at all in the way I am accustomed to, making it harder to deal with.

So, the excuses have mounted in the last few months.Writing is not easy for me, and when any excuse rears its ugly head, it's sometimes far easier to bow to the excuse than carry on with a difficult passage.

I was finally able to overcome the excuses yesterday, and settle in to some more serious writing. I hope to continue. I need to continue. I also needed the break.

Monday, January 9, 2012

He listened to the muted sounds of the brothel as he labored. The laughter, both drunken and forced, were as familiar to his ears as the loud gasps, rhythmic grunts, and slap of flesh on flesh. The sounds had often served as his only lullaby.